It Started On Watling Street
by joshman217
Summary: William Chesterton's life is about to change. One night he is attacked by a strange creature and saved by a mysterious man. As strange events keep occurring around him; he, along with his friend Ariel, investigates further and what they find will open their eyes to a whole galaxy of wonders. Their lives will never be the same.
1. Monsters Are Due On Watling Street

**IT STARTED ON WATLING STREET**

**1: Monsters Are Due On Watling Street**

William Chesterton woke to the sound of rain pattering on his roof. Warily, he glanced at the clock beside his bed, reading "2:00 AM" displayed in glowing red letters. He groaned, why must he wake up at this ungodly hour? As he settled down to go back to sleep, his vain attempt at peaceful slumber was rudely interrupted by a high pitched wail. Startled, he sat up in bed rapidly. Was someone in trouble? Abandoning the thought of adequate rest, he got out of bed and pulled his shoes on, wrapping his dressing gown around him as he made his way carefully downstairs, making sure not to disturb the other occupants of his house. Slowly opening the door he made his way outside, the cold night air hitting him like a sharp knife and clearing his mind of any lingering drowsiness.

"Hello?" he called, stepping out of the gate and into the street.

The night was still and silent and he started to think that it was just a cat that had disturbed him. He abandoned that thought a few seconds later when he found himself face to face with a hooded… thing. That was the only way he could describe it, as it's only distinguishing feature was the fact that any distinguishing feature was hidden in a long dark cloak, but it definitely didn't seem human. It raised it's head and looked him in the face with one glistening yellow eye, letting out another high pitched scream.

"Argh!"

This time, he was at a close enough proximity to have his eardrums assaulted. He clapped his hands over his hears and doubled over in pain. There was something otherworldly about the noise and it seemed to penetrate into his very soul. He was still trying to register what was happening when he found himself knocked flying in the opposite direction to the hooded creature and out of the range of its ear-piercing scream. Gathering his senses, he looked up from the ground to see the creature sprinting and leaping away with a tall, oddly dressed man in hot pursuit. Hunter and hunted had disappeared around the corner before he could register anything else about the two strange individuals. It was at this point that he gave up on trying to figure things out and stealthily made his way back into the house.


	2. Something Blue, Something Mysterious

**2: Something Blue, Something Mysterious**

He woke up five hours later and realized that the strange events of early morning must have been nothing but a dream. Smiling in the knowledge that he wasn't going mad, he got up and got ready for school. He was still convinced that he had dreamt the whole thing when he noticed his muddied shoes lying on his bedroom floor. Snapping out of his reverie, he realised that the events of five hours past had really happened, however improbable they may have seemed. He walked down the stairs in a daze, eating breakfast and leaving for school without really noticing what he was doing. It was only when a familiar, sweet-sounding voice cut into his thoughts on his way to school that he came back down to Earth.

"Will! Wait up!"

"Huh?" he turned around, seeing someone rushing towards him.

It was Ariel Jones, his best friend and the girl of his dreams. Not that she was aware of that last part of course. Ariel had mid-length brown hair tied in a pony-tail and blue eyes that twinkled with mischief. She was one of the few people Will actually trusted.

"Hey Ariel." he said smiling.

"Hey, you seemed totally zoned out just a second ago, what's up?"

"Oh," he realised that even Ariel would think he was insane if he told her what had happened. "Just… stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" she asked, persisting. "Good, bad, happy, sad, freaky, weird, boring?"

As she rolled off this list of possible emotions that were running through his head, he couldn't help but smile; her excitable, out-there personality was already brightening up his day.

"Uh, more the freaky weird category."

"Oooh, tell me more!"

"You'd think I was crazy."

She gave him the "are you serious" look.

"Come on, I'm the craziest person you know."

"Yeah, even so."

Will was struggling to find a competent excuse to maintain his appearance of sanity.

"Beans. Spill."

"Fine," he sighed. "Basically, I was trying to sleep when…"

They were walking in the school gate when he finished telling his insane story and Astrid's mouth was hanging open in awe.

"Radical!"

He was surprised.

"You don't… think I've lost my grip on reality then?"

She giggled.

"Oh, come on Will, you lost that the day you met me."

He smiled, she had a point.

"So I think the first place to start is finding this mysterious man, seeing as you didn't fare so well with the hooded creature last time."

"I'm sorry I ever doubted you." he laughed, making a note to himself to never try and keep anything from Astrid ever again. Aside from his unrequited adoration.

"It's okay, I get it, it does sound pretty crazy. So anyways, describe him to me again?"

At his point they had reached their respective lockers. Will glanced at the time, a minute to the bell.

"Recess?"

"You got it!" Ariel winked. "Your sanity is safe with me."

Will daydreamed through the morning, his daydreams switching from the strange events of early morning to his love for Ariel. Occasionally he would have to snap back to reality and participate in the class, but even then his mind was elsewhere. When the bell rang for recess, he was relieved to get out of the classroom. As he was walking out of the corridor to the other side of the school where his locker was situated, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye, something sitting across the road from the school, something blue and very out of place. As he turned around, there was a noise like the groaning of engines and when he focused on that space, the object was gone. Perplexed, he continued on to his locker. Opening his locker and taking out his recess, he shut his locker door again and turned around to be greeted by a very enthusiastic Ariel Jones.

"Come with me." she said determinedly, grabbing his arm and dragging him outside.

"Where. Are. We. Going?" he asked in-between breaths.

"Somewhere no one can overhear our conversation." she replied matter-of-factly.

She finally stopped behind the bike shed, pushing him against the wall and staring him in the face.

"Talk. Man. Describe."

"Um…."

There were so many places he wished this were going right now, but it wasn't, so he described the mysterious man who had saved his life as best he could from the two seconds he had laid eyes on him.

"He was tall, with… floppy hair?"

"Don't ask me, I didn't see him."

"Um, yeah his hair looked kinda floppy and he was…. oddly dressed."

"Oddly dressed how?"

"I don't really know, it's just the impression I got."

Ariel looked at him as if she expected more.

"Is that all?"

"Remember that this was about _two seconds_ in _the dark._"

"Okay, I'll let you go."

Ariel released him, stepping back and taking her hands off his shoulders.

"Thank you." Will smiled, he couldn't help but be amused by her curiosity.

"So we really don't have much to work on then." Ariel said glumly.

"Not at all, although I did see something weird just before…."

"Weird! Good! What was it?" Ariel pushed him against the wall again.

"I may have been hallucinating." he replied weakly, trying to control his hormones, which were going mad at the fact that the girl he liked had him pushed against a wall and nothing in that sort of area was actually happening.

"I don't believe that for a second, the only time you ever hallucinated was when you ate that weird mushroom on school camp."

He winced. "Don't remind me."

"So, what do you think you saw?"

"Something blue that disappeared when I turned around to look at it."

"That's it?"

"Um, there was a weird noise?"

"Right, so you saw an oddly dressed man with floppy hair chasing a weird creature with an ear-piercing scream and something blue that disappears." Ariel said, noticing how insane the sentence sounded as she was saying it.

"Pretty much, still not got any lingering questions about my sanity?" Will replied, smiling grimly.

"Not at all, this is brilliant! Most interesting thing to happen in this neighbourhood since… well, since nothing interesting happened in this neighbourhood."

"Which is every single day up until today right?"

"Exactly."

Ariel grabbed Will's hand and pulled him close to her. This made Will confused and excited at the same time.

"Thank you, Will Chesterton, for bringing this fascinating matter to my attention."

"No problem." he replied quizzically, still not quite comprehending why she needed him at such close proximity.

This question was answered half a second later when she embraced him tightly, putting her head on his shoulder and whispering:

"Also, you're the best friend a girl could ask for."

With that, she kissed him on the cheek and let go of him. Still slightly startled, he rubbed his cheek, red-faced.

"Oh don't look like that, what did you think I was about to do?" Ariel said, laughing and punching his arm.

He started to speak, but stopped, getting too nervous to say what he had wanted to for the past three years.

"Anyways, I need to go to the office to pick something up, so I'll see you in English." she said rapidly, darting off with a little wave over her shoulder.

Will just stood there, half happy to have a friend like Ariel, half annoyed that he had wasted another opportunity to tell her how he felt.


	3. Questions Answered With Questions

**3: Questions Answered With Questions**

Come English, Will's mind was far too preoccupied by weird occurrences and his feelings for Ariel, who was a large fan of weird occurrences, to pay attention to the teacher going on about Shakespeare's Sonnets, even if he shared a first name with the legendary playwright. Ariel was sitting next to him, which was normal, although it still made him excited, however lame that might sound. Halfway through the class she passed him a folded up piece of paper, which he discreetly unfolded under his desk. It was a drawing of a tall man with floppy hair and a blue scribble in the corner surrounded by question marks. Will smiled, folded it back up and slipped it into his pocket.

The next few periods passed like any other school day and he was relieved when the bell rang for lunch. Closing his locker door after putting his books away and taking out his lunch, he turned to find…. no one. Which was odd, as Astrid would always turn up behind his locker door at the start of recess and lunch. Figuring that she would turn up next to him at some point during lunch, he went outside and sat down on a bench at the edge of the oval. He stared intently at the place he had spotted the blue object, but there was still nothing there. He sighed, bored and turned his attention to his lunch. Time passed slowly and half an hour later he was still sitting by himself when he heard the same sound he had heard earlier, a noise like the groaning of engines. Snapping out of his dull daze, he started and stood up rapidly. The sound was coming from behind him and he ran off in its direction excitedly. Following the sound he came expectantly to… the storage room. Thinking it was a funny place for the blue object to appear; he shrugged, glad to have some sort of lead, and opened the door. Closing it behind him so as not to arouse suspicion, he found himself plunged into darkness. He fumbled for the light switch and a single light dangling from the roof flicked on, revealing the blue object at the back of the room. He approached it slowly, running his eyes over it wondrously. It was a 1960's style London police box, not something you found very often these days. He recognized it from when the History teacher was talking about the 60's and he was actually paying attention. Another indication was the large sign on top that said POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX in large white letters. For such an out-of-date object which held little to no interest to him, the police box had Will transfixed. It seemed mysterious, almost otherworldly in nature. He reached out his hand, his fingers tingling with anticipation, and placed it on the front of the police box. It was wooden, like it should have been, but something still didn't sit right with him. Reaching towards the door handle, he moved to pull it open, as directed by the sign on the door which read:

There was a sign on the other door for St. John's Ambulance but he wasn't quite sure why that was there. He didn't have much time to ponder this, let alone pull the doors open, when a sudden voice from behind him caused him to spin around in fright.

"I wouldn't bother trying to open that, you need a key."

The speaker was shrouded in shadow, but he could make out floppy hair and a bow tie, which indicated to him that this was the very same man he had seen last night. He held a round silver key up to the light, which Will desperately wanted to snatch out of his hand, as he was sure unlocking the door to the police box would unlock the mystery of the previous night and this mysterious man who now stood before him, just out of the light.

"Who are you?" Will asked, straining to make out the features of this elusive man.

"Oh, just a mad man with a box."

And with that, there was a brief flash of green light from something the man was holding in his hand, accompanied by a high pitched electrical noise, and the room was plunged back into darkness. Before he could comprehend what had happened, there was a sound of the police box doors opening and closing and the noise like the groaning of engines and when Will clumsily flicked on the light again, the police box was gone, taking the mysterious man with it.


	4. Who?

**4: Who?**

When the bell signifying the end of lunch rang, Will made his way to class in a daze, trying to comprehend what had just happened. He was so preoccupied by his thoughts that Ariel's mysterious absence had completely slipped his mind. It only came back to him when he sat down at his desk in History and looked across to find the seat next to him totally vacant. They were currently working in groups and Will did _not _want to suffer through the class with his irritating group if Ariel wasn't there to balance out the scale of annoying person-awesome friend, so he faked sick and excused himself from the class, something he was very accomplished at.

Walking home, he tried to work out where Ariel had mysteriously vanished to when that question was answered for him in the form of an excitable figure attack hugging him from behind. Whirling around, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the figure was Ariel, which was good on two counts. One, he now knew where she was, and two, it wasn't some insane random person.

"You don't know how glad I am I found you, I have the most incredible news-", they spluttered simultaneously before stopping and looking at the other, not sure who should speak first.

"Ladies first."

"Okay, you know how I have been mysteriously absent for the last couple of hours?"

"It had crossed my mind."

"Well, it's because I was doing some investigating-"

"Of course."

"Don't interrupt. I discovered the most incredible thing, you're not the first person to see something blue that disappears out of the corner of your eye. Lady I talked to says she saw something standing in her backyard but when she went outside, it had disappeared, and she said it was a-"

"1950s Police Box, I know."

"You… know?"

"Yeah, this is what I was gonna tell you…."

Ariel stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed as Will recounted his lunchtime adventure. When he finished she immediately grabbed him and they started walking in the direction of his house.

"Where are we going?"

"Your house."

"Well, I kinda guessed, but why?"

"So we can talk more about this. Plus you have food."

"Right."

They arrived at Will's house and sat cross-legged on his bed, eating corn chips and discussing these strange events.

"It was actually the weirdest thing, I can't explain it at all." Will said after a while.

"That's what's so brilliant about it! Still I can't believe that you actually saw him…." Ariel replied, trailing off ponderously.

"Who?"

"Well, that's just the point. Who is he?"

As they talked, that question lingered in Will's mind.

Who?


	5. Disappearing Act

**5: Disappearing Act**

It seemed like just another ordinary day when Ariel Jones woke up, but since the last two, she knew much better. She was expecting strange things to happen today, and she had a tingling feeling that she and Will were going to have a lot of their lingering questions answered.

Will. As she got ready for school, that was all she thought about. William Chesterton, her best friend of the past six years, and her crush of the last eight, ever since he transferred to her primary school for grades four-six. Back then, she had been much too shy to talk to him and they had slowly become friends as she realized he wanted to talk to her, completely opening up into the bubbly person she was today in their final year of primary school. She went over all this in her mind with a mixture of joy and hopelessness. The former because he made her really happy and respected her as a person and trusted her as a close friend. The latter because she was convinced that he had no interest in her romantically; and as for the last few years of high school, when hormones began to run wild, he had shown little to no interest in the subject of girls, which either meant he had some veiled crush on some girl outside of school, or he didn't swing that way. She wasn't sure which one would be more disappointing.

There were two instances that merited some sort of non-platonic occurrence, the first being an awkward kiss in a grade four school production, which they had both been embarrassed about at the time and laughed about once they got to high school. The second was the previous day, in which she had pressed him against a wall to interrogate him further about the mysterious man, getting a little too close for comfort in the process, to the point where she briefly considered telling him her feelings, but, seeing the look of confusion on his face, backed out by instead whispering in his ear that he was "the best friend a girl could ask for", kissing him on the cheek, regretting the last part when he turned bright red with embarrassment, and hurried away with some excuse about needing to go to the office. Luckily, he didn't mention the incident in English or when they were discussing the strange events in his room, which either meant that it was okay, or he was embarrassed and didn't want to mention it in case they both felt awkward.

These thoughts took her out of the house and down the road towards school; where, exiting the front gate in a daze, wrapped up in her ponderings, she walked right into the subject of said ponderings, waiting outside her gate.

"Oof, hey Ariel" he said, giving that charming smile of his.

"Hey Will, sorry didn't see you there." she replied, embarrassed.

"It's all good, let's get to school."

They walked in the gate together just as the bell rang, and made their way to their lockers hurriedly. Ariel and Will had Maths together, and they did _not _want to be late; for the wrath of Mrs Buckingham was legendary. Ariel spent most of her class-time daydreaming about Will, the mysterious events they were investigating and back to Will. Come lunchtime, she was determined to meet this elusive man. Grabbing her lunch, she could see Will beginning to close his locker door and did her usual routine of timing it just right so that when Will closed the door, she was right behind it.

"Hey." he grinned his charming grin, and her insides fluttered.

"Hey." she replied, grabbing his arm and dragging him outside.

"Where are we going?"

"To the storage shed, where else?"

"It's not gonna be there."

"It's worth a look."

"I guess."

Ariel snuck up to the door of the storage shed, tugging Will along behind her. Her hand closed around the doorknob, and for one brief moment the air was crackling with anticipation as she slowly turned the knob, pushing the door open to reveal…

Nothing. Absolutely, irrevocably, nothing. Aside from the usual junk that was always there, the space where Will had seen the blue police box was completely empty.

"I told you it disappeared!" he said, exasperated.

"It didn't disappear." Ariel replied, her voice tinged with disappointment.

Will looked confused, "Of course it did, there is _nothing _there."

"No. I know that, but from what you described, it didn't disappear…" she paused briefly, as if to build suspense, "it dematerialized."

"Well, it would be really great if we could _materialize _some answers."

"We just have to be patient. He'll turn up again, I just know it."

After school they walked home together as usual, Ariel theorizing about who the man was, and how his box could "dematerialize", where he was from, etcetera. Will pitched in occasionally, but he mostly left it to Ariel, who had an overactive imagination.

"Ooh! Maybe he's an alien!"

"Oh come on Ariel, don't be ridiculous."

"Okay, okay, I'm just saying."

Unbeknownst to the pair, a man stood hidden behind the fence of a house they were passing; watching them, listening to Ariel's wild theories. A tall, oddly dressed man with floppy hair.


End file.
